Monthly Archives for September 2015

You can have your smelly goats and fried whatever on a stick — my favorite part of the Minnesota State Fair is the vintage photobooths. They’re so vintage they need a sign: This is actual film. Please be patient.

Last month marked our fourth yearly visit to the fair, and after we showed Dalia the state’s largest boar (she was so impressed she may have wet herself), we set off to take our annual photo.

We came prepared; we knew the photobooths were next door to the butterfly house… we just forgot where the butterfly house was.

As we snaked our way through fanny packed fairgoers and livestock turds, our conversation felt familiar.

“This looks right, doesn’t it?”

“I know where it is, just follow me.”

“I think we turn right up here.”

“I know where it is, just follow me.”

“Isn’t it near the cookies?”

“Can you please just FOLLOW ME?”

After 20 minutes of passing the same corndog stand, we realized that finding the photobooths–and arguing incessantly about their location–was as much a part of the tradition as the 30 seconds behind the curtain.

It’s always important to honor old traditions — I’m already excited for next year’s navigation-themed argument — but new state fair traditions may include: nursing while eating an ear of corn, napping while Y looks at the tractors, getting licked by an angry horse, and inhaling a milkshake while walking back to our car.

1. The most beautiful butterfly you’ve ever seen || 2. Good meat from the Lone Grazer || 3. Playing around with watercolors || 4. FLYING into the new year at Rosh Hashana services? Ha…ha?

4 moments

1 | Recently, I went to the mall and left a little sad. You see, for some reason, nineties fashion is back and the stores are filled with overalls, chunky clogs, scrunchies, and daisies. This stuff was popular when I was in 6th and 7th grade, and I don’t know about you, but middle school was NOT fun for me. As I walked to the parking lot, I was an eleven year old again: with a pocket full of yin yang stickers and no one to share them with, headed home to watch SNICK alone on my couch. This trend is AWFUL.

This weekend, Y said, “Can we talk about how the lady on the cover of the Madewell catalog looks like a mom from the 90s?” Y has spoken — this needs to end.

2 | On Saturday, our neighborhood hosted the Monarch Festival, which celebrates the monarch butterfly migration from Minnesota to Mexico with butterfly releases, butterfly crafts, Aztec dancers, salsa dancing, tacos, people dressed like butterflies on stilts… you know, what you would expect. The best part was that we kept running into people we know, so Y had MULTIPLE opportunities to tell this really amazing joke about how he thought the Monarch Festival was going to be a tribute to the history of the British royal family.

3 | On the way home from dinner at a friend’s house, waaaay past Dalia’s bedtime, she fell asleep in her fancy pink dress in the carseat. In what historians are calling THE BIGGEST PARENTING WIN EVER, Y and I got her out of her carseat, out of her dress, and into pajamas with lots of snaps WITHOUT WAKING HER UP. I’ve never been more proud.

4 | Y and one of his friends went on an impromptu dad-date the other day and took the babies for a walk. Suddenly, I had an hour and a half to myself, which was far more stressful than it should have been. I think I spent the first hour and 29 minutes alternating between trying to decide what I should do with all of my free time and hyperventilating that my free time was quickly expiring. Finally I decided to go for a bike ride and it was GLORIOUS.

4 tastes

1 | For some reason, despite hating every taco I try, I keep ordering them in various places around the Twin Cities. I mean, when you live in , and I keep being horribly disappointed. At the Monarch Festival we tried Taco Taxi and YES. Just yes. (One other exception has been Sonora.)

3 | Our neighborhood had a block party in the parking lot of our corner grocery store. There was all kinds of stuff going on — Y accidentally walked in the middle of a cake walk (he didn’t win) and someone from the neighborhood church slipped a gift bag into Dalia’s stroller with a Bible coloring book and a cross necklace — but the main purpose seemed to be for local vendors that are sold in the grocery store to sample their products. Bloody Marys. Salsa. Homemade granola bars. Cheese curds. Salami. Chocolate. Honey. Granola. Coffee. I LOVE MY NEIGHBORHOOD.

4 | At Terzo wine bar, there’s this brilliant situation where, after you order your food, your waiter asks if you want to try the taste of the day for a dollar. Presented beautifully on a little spoon is one delicious bite of some combination the chef has dreamed up. Ours was delicious, but I was too busy marveling about the concept to remember what exactly we ate. Whatever it was, it had a balsamic drizzle.

reading /listening

I’ve started four books this weekend and haven’t been into any of them, including, sadly, Gumption by Nick Offerman. It pains me to type that. / My background noise of choice this weekend is all of the college football.

The saddest book currently for sale at your friendly neighborhood bookstore is called 940 Saturdays.

Fine, that may have been an exaggeration (have you READ Sarah’s Key??), but the premise of this book, a journal, is that when you have a kid, you have 940 Saturdays before that kid turns 18, and YOU NEED TO WRITE ABOUT THEM BEFORE THEY GO AWAY. Eighteen years is a huge chunk of time, but putting a number on it — a number that silently ticks away while you’re busy living life — is enough to give me hives. We’re already down to like 914 Saturdays over here, and what do we have to show for it? A giggly baby with rolls for days and 2,000 pictures on my phone? IT’S NOT ENOUGH. How will I remember?

I’m half joking, but the book’s point is well taken. I’ve been trying to write more often — it’s been a goal of mine every new year, every Jewish new year, every fiscal new year (I like to use any opportunity I can find for a fresh start) every birthday, every month, every week — and jotting down what happened each weekend seems like a good place to start.

4 snaps

1. LOOK OUT BEHIND YOU || 2. “You can sleep when you’re dead, dad.” || 3. Sometimes you need a late night snack, sometimes that late night snack is 1/4th of a loaf of challah || 4. I don’t want to tell you how many selfies I took of Dalia and myself this weekend, but this is one of them.

4 moments

1 | We brought Dalia to Shabbat services Saturday morning. As a kid, I hated going to services. As a young adult, the day I realized I didn’t have to go to services if I didn’t want to felt very important — if that moment in my life had been in a movie, I would have been standing on top of a building with the city swirling around me with possibility. As an adult, some of my best memories of childhood are falling asleep on the way home from Friday night services and getting carried inside in my fancy dress and shoes. And as a parent, bringing my baby to the once a month “tot Shabbat services” is kind of the highlight of my month. IT’S THE CIRCLE OF LIFE.

2 | Y and I went out for a drink Sunday night and accidentally stumbled upon an EDM festival (translation: electronic dance music), which we were way overdressed for (i.e. I was wearing bottoms, which were clearly optional). Don’t be jealous, but we saw Datsik.

Yeah, I don’t know who that is either. But I did have a gin, lemon, and lavender cocktail. I don’t know why lavender in drinks is so popular these days but I hope it never goes away.

3 | Saturday night, Y and his mom were making dinner and I ran to Ikea to buy the tray to Dalia’s high chair (sometimes high chairs and their trays are sold separately and you don’t realize until you put the high chair together — thanks, Ikea.) Can I just give you one piece of advice? NEVER GO TO IKEA ON A SATURDAY NIGHT. The lines snake back into the warehouse and you might find yourself behind a family of eleven who are buying the entire Hemnes collection and all you need is a $5 high chair tray.

4 | I get obnoxiously giddy about this time of year, when fall is almost close enough to touch, winter is far enough away that it seems romantic and cozy, and your football team could still make it to the national championship.

4 tastes

1 | Scones and Gravy. That’s a thing. It might sound like a downgrade from biscuits and gravy, but it absolutely isn’t. Get it at Harriet Brasserie. Sit on the patio and laugh at the people waiting in line next door to get into Tilia.

2 | Schnitzel made by Y’s mom, who was in town visiting. I have this vivid memory of eating these, defrosted, in Y’s rat and roach infested apartment when we were in college. He really knew how to woo a girl.

3 | Matzah ball soup from Cecil’s deli. It was so necessary on a gloomy Sunday.

4 | Impromptu challah French toast for some French toast connoisseurs: toddlers. It was my first time making French toast, and I think they approved.

reading /listening

Reading Sick in the Head, Judd Apatow. I’m borrowing it from the library right now, but I’m planning to buy this one and highlight the crap out of it. / Listening to a lot of Beach House this weekend.